cosa fai or cosa facevi?

Senior Member

I recently learned that to ask someone what they did you say "cosa facevi ...?" but I just read a sentence that said "cosa fai per le vacanze di Natale?" Shouldn't it be "cosa facevi per le vacanze di Natale?" or can you use either? Probably a stupid question but would like to know if there's a reason.

Senior Member

Senior Member

"Cosa facevi quando eri piccolo?" <- what did you use to do ...
as woody said, to express a past habit

"Cosa facevi la notte del 20 Agosto?" <- What were you doing...

I think this form is used only if someone is asking you about something happened at that time and both the speakers know that at the same something else happened elsewhere. In fact I want to underline that we use the imperfect only if we're asking about an action happened in the past while another were in progress. In the example is not expressed. This is because this form is used for example by policeman, detective and in a situation in which both speakers that know something has happened.

However we'd rather use
"Cosa stavi facendo l'altro ieri mentre stavo cucinando?"
If we express the actions that were in progress.

I'd like to read the opinions of others native too about this use of imperfect.

Senior Member

I would have said What were you doing? as Paul said in his examples ("Cosa fecevi or stavi facendo con il mio pc? what were you doing with my pc?").

But it raises the question... if you walk in and catch your child in flagrante, writing on the walls and breaking dishes and carrying on, you'd say What have you been doing (while I was not here watching)?" Is it the same?

Banned

This is indeed a tricky issue concerning tense usage. It is made more complex by the lack of an equivalent of the present perfect progressive in Italian.

While waiting for native speakers' opinions I'll venture a guess.

Apart from the use of the present perfect progressive followed by "for" or "since" there is another usage of this tense which is sometimes hard to render into Italian. For example you get home and find muddy footprints all over the floor. You then say to your kids: "(What have you been doing?")"Have you been playing in the garden again?". It is used to refer to a recent activity whose results you've just witnessed. You didn't see the kids playing outside. You only saw the mud on the floor.

If on the other hand you saw your kid in the neighbour's garden, you could say to him when he comes home: "What were you doing in the Smiths' garden? You weren't by any chance chasing their cat again, were you?".